Highly-available packet forwarding systems in information networks use a control plane implemented by a control processor to build a forwarding table and a forwarding plane implemented by a network processor to forward received packets based on the forwarding table information. When the control processor must be restarted (e.g., after a failure or upgrade of the control plane), the control processor (but not the network processor) may lose the forwarding table information. After restart or upgrade, the control processor may implement a control plane to build a new forwarding table, which may be different than the old forwarding table being used by the network processor's forwarding plane to forward packets. A challenge arises concerning how to synchronize the old forwarding table and the new forwarding table to forward packets effectively.